Nestlé S.A. (NESN) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Hello, and good morning. If everyone could please take their seats for the final presentation today. It is a great honor to introduce Nestlé, the world's largest food company back and bringing back to CAGNY today. Nestlé global array of billion-dollar brands, dominant market share and route-to-market scale are truly durable competitive advantages. At the end of 2024, Nestlé hosted a Capital Markets Day to unveil the next chapter of its strategic evolution. With us today to present, please help me in welcoming CEO, Laurent Freixe; CEO of Zone of Americas, Steve Presley; and the Investor Relations team.

Good morning to all. How are you doing? Great? I know that for you, it's the last presentation at CAGNY this year. It happens that for me, it's my first, so it's the last and the first at the same time, and it's a great pleasure to be with you. I'm joined today by Steve Presley, our CEO of Zone Americas. I will take the disclaimer as read and get straight into it. The agenda for today is very simple. I will start with an update on our strategy and progress since I took over back in September, and then Steve will bring to life how we are deploying that strategy in Zone Americas and why we are a bit on the medium-term prospects for the business. It's all about accelerating Nestlé. And let me start with giving you a brief overview for what Nestlé stands for. Nestlé is the largest food and beverage company in the world. We operate in 185 countries. So this is probably as many countries as the United Nations. We are -- and we like to say the most global, 185 countries and probably the most local at the same time. We are unique in the breadth of the categories where we enjoy leading positions and we cover them with an unmatched portfolio of brands and products. Keep in mind that we got 31 billionaire brands in the portfolio. We are and we will continue to be the nutrition health and wellness company. And I guess that resonates in current times. Our product portfolio caters to consumer needs at every stage of life from birth to elderly age and at all price points from affordable to premium. We leverage our nutrition know-how to fuel our innovation engine and enhance the quality of life around the world. We play a role, and we can say that we play a role in the diets of everyone at every stage of life from birth to elderly ages. '24, looking at the performance and the guidance was a year of transition for us, and we are now moving forward quickly. We delivered '24 results in line with or slightly better than our guidance provided in October, both on top line and on profitability. And our cash flow was also quite strong. Guidance for '25 is unchanged for improved organic growth versus last year, on the way towards our medium-term target of 4% plus. We will see a drop in margin in '25 as we invest for growth as we are stepping up investment to accelerate category growth and improve market share performance. This is funded by our CHF 2.5 billion cost-saving program called Fuel For Growth. In short, the levers that we have within our control give us conviction in our medium-term guidance. You can see here the virtuous circle we use internally as our strategic framework. This is something I developed back 15 years ago when I was heading Zone Europe. I've always thought and said that there is no growth without investment. You want to grow, you want to gain market share, you need to invest. Back then, everyone's investment focus, including Nestlé, was on emerging markets. A [ going ] for Nestlé to put incremental resources into Europe was a loss battle. It was going to be very, very tough, especially in the financial crisis. So I knew that we had to generate the resources ourselves to fund the investments, to gain market share and to drive sustainable value creation and it's an approach that I've kept ever since. I applied it in the Americas and in LatAm when I was heading those 2 zones, and it works, whatever the economic conditions, whatever the environment, good times, bad times. And I have now introduced it across the group, across the rest of the company, and it's already visible everywhere in the strategic framework developed product categories, in the market, and you can see it mainstream and embraced by the entire organization. So that's our compass and this is the way we want to win over time. The virtuous circle starts with efficiency because that is the fuel for the growth. This is the make or break of the virtuous circle. We are grasping the efficiency opportunity end-to-end in a coordinated way with a structured group-wide program and this is the difference rather than through ad hoc local projects. We are working in a data-powered way leveraging digital technologies and AI. And we have clear targets with incentives linked to the delivery. As I said, we target CHF 2.5 billion of cost savings by the end of '27, and this is coming on top of the existing annual cost efficiency initiatives that are delivering roughly CHF 1.2 billion per annum. Approximately 3/4 of the Fuel for Growth will be coming from procurement with the remainder coming from operational efficiencies and commercial investments. And I've had several questions on whether these procurement savings are real hard savings that is coming often and the answer, just ask our suppliers and they will tell you that they are very real. So that's how we are creating the fuel. Now let's look at how we will deploy it to accelerate growth to reach our midterm ambition of 4%-plus growth. Our portfolio is privileged as it gives us exposure to category growth of 3% to 4%, which is a good starting point. And to get to 4% plus, we need to do 2 things. We need to accelerate the category growth and we need to improve our market shares. And we'll do that by concentrating on our core and focusing our resources on our best growth opportunities. That means expanding our winners so that they reach their full potential. That means achieving more impact from innovation by scaling our big bets in the spirit of fewer, bigger, better. It means building up new growth engines and as well addressing our underperformance. So let me take this one by one. The core part of our plan to accelerate Nestlé is to build out our existing winners. So it's a good idea to expand the winners. Even for our biggest categories and brands, there are still white spaces where we can expand, where we can invest, new geographies, new subcategories, new business models or innovations. Let me take the example of coffee. We are, by and large, the #1 coffee company globally with the 3 best brands in the industry. We have a great opportunity to leverage these brands much further into out-of-home, ready-to-drink and the cold coffee consumption space. Together, these are already CHF 3.5 billion in sales, and we see the potential to continue to grow them in double digits. In PetCare, which is our second largest category, we have a big geographic opportunity in AOA, which is Asia, Oceania, Africa. And on top, we are developing our snack and treats business. And on top, the therapeutic diet segment, building up upon our R&D capabilities offers significant opportunities for expansion. Let me zoom in on another one example and it's not a new brand. It's KitKat. '25 will mark the 90th anniversary of KitKat, and it's yet still one of our fastest-growing brands globally and in the category. We have substantial runway ahead. So I want that message to be well understood. In what sense? We can leverage new multi-sensorial experiences. We can play in the mindful snacking. We can add new formats, and we are actually launching tablets, KitKat tablets in 29 countries across all 3 zones, and we are further supporting the launch of bite-size KitKat balls in 19 countries. We are investing heavily behind these launches. There will be a new production line in Europe and we are also deploying full marketing campaigns to support those innovations. Even in a 90-year-old brand, we are driving growth through innovation, through geographic expansion, through innovation, as I said, and through investments. The next growth driver is our innovation, big bets. It's a big thing for Nestlé to have achieved, to have managed to bring down the innovation big bets to just 6, as you can see. We are now focusing on a small number of big bets each year, concentrating our resources to ensure we achieve more impact from innovation. I'd like to take that example of that image that let's think that we have 3 liters of water. And if we try to spread -- those 3 liters of water across 100 seats, none of them will grow. But if we concentrate those 3 liters of water on 6, then innovation, the big bets will get healthy, grown-up plants. They will build up and grow branches and bear fruits. So that's the idea of the fewer, bigger, better in the spirit that innovation has to be incremental and innovation requires incremental resources. So you see our 6 big bets, and we are fully rolling out those big bets with speed, as you will see demonstrated in Americas. On top of expanding existing winners and our innovation big bets, we see opportunities to fuel new areas of growth and nutrition, health and wellness is at the heart of these opportunities. We are talking about healthy longevity. Population is aging globally and people want to age in good shape, in good health. We talk about women's health, we talk about weight management. There are 2.7 billion people overweight or obese on the planet. So that's a massive opportunity. And affordable nutrition is also a very significant opportunity. So those are existing or new growth areas, and they sit very much in our core and we have the expertise and the foundations to build them into new growth engines. An example of that expertise is in proteins, which play across several of these opportunities. Protein is big and protein is key. And Nestlé has been a leader in proteins for over 150 years. We have more than 300 R&D experts working in this area. Our patented technologies and expertise in how to structure proteins allow us to secure the highest protein concentration. We can provide nutrition solutions tailored to specific consumer needs and medical condition, be it as a support to GLP-1 diets, treating malnutrition or boosting [indiscernible] recovery. Within our Nestlé Health Science portfolio, we already have protein-focused products with CHF 2 billion in annual sales, growing in high single digits. In summary, I'm very excited about all the potential we have in that area in this space to create new growth engine for the future. Last but not least, let me turn to our underperformance. We have given visibility on the fact that we got 18 key business cells where we have been underperforming in terms of the market share. In '24, we gained or held market share in approximately half of our business by number of cells, but in less than half by sales value. And the majority of that share loss has been coming from these 18 key underperforming cells. So correcting that underperformance is about addressing gaps in our value proposition. If you lose share, if we lose share is that we got a gap in our value proposition against competition. We want to address that systematically around achieving product superiority, getting the price right, making sure that we get maximum visibility and consumer engagement in that order of priority. When I talked to this slide last week with our results, I picked out a few examples of the first 2 dimensions. Today, I'd like to mention quickly examples on the other 2. Let's take U.S. coffee creamers, which is a big category for us in the U.S. and significant, very sizable globally. Our key issue has been supply. We have been short of capacity. And of course, that has limited sales. We have been obliged to focus the assortment, limit or stop promotions, limit or stop innovation. And this came at a time when competition has been particularly active in the space. This is a very, very attractive space. We have now addressed our capacity issues with production ramping up in our recently opened Glendale plant in Arizona. We now need to get back on shelf with the customer. And as you know, their shelf reset is once a year happening as we speak. So we know that it may take a little bit of time before we see the full range being back on shelf, but we are on the right path, and we can innovate and we can promote, of course. On brand communications, soluble coffee is a great example of where we first had to fix pricing before stepping up communication. Having made an adjustment to pricing, we are now investing more in paid media to increase our share of voice, and there as well, we want to achieve superiority. Actually, our view to gain share is to achieve superiority at every step of the value chain and including in terms of share of voice, achieving share of voice above share of markets. Overall, it's early days, of course, in addressing many of our issues, but we are moving decisively in the right direction, and there are already encouraging signs in most of those 18 business cells. So that is where we stand on strategy to accelerate performance built on the virtuous circle and transformation, but the strategy is only as good as its execution. That's why I've also focused heavily on cascading that strategy down through the organization. And I'm very pleased to say that it is already being embedded. We are not just evolving our strategy, but really changing the way we work, and we are changing fast. With that, I'd like to hand over to Steve, who will talk you through what we are doing in Zone Americas. Thank you very much.

Thanks, Laurent. And as Laurent said, I'm Steve Presley. I run Zone Americas for Nestlé and it's great to be here with you. It's been a year or so since I've been back at CAGNY, but excited to kind of share the progress with some of the challenges in terms of what we're doing as well. When you look at Nestlé in the Americas, it's a similar portfolio, but actually differently weighted than the company globally as you look at it. We have a much heavier index around PetCare. PetCare is our largest category, around 30% of the business, with coffee at 20%. And so when you look across that you have 50% in highly concentrated businesses. And most of the business, 72% sits within North America and 28% in LatAm. So a very strong presence across all of the markets. And it's really 100,000 amazing team members focused on trying to drive this business and better serve our consumers every day in 24 different countries with different challenges and opportunities in every single one and such a diverse zone that it's an honor to get to lead, to be honest. And when you look at it, it really comes to life to our brands. And in Americas, Nestlé has 31 billionaire brands globally for us in the Americas, 27 of those are actually active within our zone. And in the majority of our businesses, in around 70% of the business, we have a leadership position. We're either a very strong, 1 or #2 in all of the categories. And when you look at it, it's not just in terms of scale. Yes, we have a very large business across the Americas, but it's really around from a consumer standpoint, one of the few portfolios that has the breadth that can start at the very first days of life for consumers with NAN or Gerber or Nido and all the way through every life stage event for every consumer and not just for our human consumers but also for our pet consumers that we love so dearly with our Purina portfolio. And it's that breadth of the portfolio is what allows us to really have the strength that we are able to leverage in the marketplace. And yes, it's a deep, broad portfolio, but also, at the same time, you have over 95% penetration in almost every single country. In most countries, we're in 98% or 99% of the homes in every single country with a Nestlé product. And it's that kind of intimacy and that kind of reach within the homes that allows us to have a deeper consumer understanding, I think, than many of our competitive set. And so if you look at it, it's Nestlé's largest business. It's CHF 45 billion as reported last June 2024. It's been a good growth engine for Nestlé overall, 6.3% organic growth across the 6-year CAGR, and a very strong profitable business for us at over 21% UTOP margin. And that's a bit of the past. It's been a great business for us, but there are some short-term challenges and continues to be a great business. And why -- you heard Laurent talk about, we're confident about this midterm growth trajectory. Like why do we believe in the midterm and what's different? And it's really because the portfolio is so well positioned to capture this future growth. When you look at the overweight, as I showed before, you see an overweighting in PetCare and coffee in these categories in health science that are higher growth. So we're exposed -- more of our portfolio across the Americas is exposed to higher growth categories. We have exposures -- very, very strong exposure to the emerging economies across Latin America, but it's not just exposure in those economies, it's actually leadership. We generally have leadership in almost all of the countries across Latin America as we continue to see an expansion of the middle class in that part of the world and continue to create new opportunities for the business. And then one of the most important ones, generationally, younger consumers have a higher affinity across continue to actually be the #1 engaged thing on social media is still food and pets and right aligned with our portfolio. So we see this big demographic trend across the generations as well that gives us that confidence as we look ahead into the future for not just Nestlé and globally, but certainly Nestlé in Americas. And you heard Laurent talk about it, but the virtuous circle really is the framework, and it seems so simple, and that's actually the beauty of it is the simplicity and the focus around priorities. And I'd say, -- and it's really a shifting priority. People say, well, why is it different? Really what's different about the organization? And the difference is this clarity of focus around priorities. And everyone around the organization is aligned to this idea of, look, we have to drive greater efficiencies. We've always been driving efficiency, but greater efficiencies across the organization and unlock truly the scale of Nestlé. And then we've got to feed that back into the brand. It starts with this idea of we've got to start with the #1 priority of accelerating growth of this organization and returning to winning share on those 18 key cells. And if we do those things together, it creates value for all of our key stakeholders, not just financial, but also societal as well. And so we really center around this idea of the virtuous circle. And I'll start with efficiency and productivity. And in our zone, as the largest zone, to deliver the CHF 2.5 billion, it can't be done unless we deliver a significant portion of that in the Americas. And it starts with this idea of procurement. And if I look at it, in the past, the zone is a very large zone. And so you would say, look at a USD 40-plus billion business, almost a USD 50 billion business, how much scale is there to gain. But there is scale, and typically, we would solve those challenges within the zone to a degree. And the real unlock and the real pivot in the organization is; one, continue to leverage the zone opportunities within the zone, but at the same time, bring the true breadth and depth and scale of Nestlé at a global level to bear to actually drive those procurement efficiencies, to drive those efficiencies across the organization and don't just solve the problems at a large-scale zone, solve the problems at the global leader of food and beverage in terms of scale. And that unlocking is where we'll see that significant increase in value and the key contribution to that CHF 2.5 billion. In addition, look, we'll deploy new tools. Obviously, we'll continue to invest digitally to become smarter and better in procurement and unlock value in that space. But it's really this change in mindset in terms of how we approach that. And then the second piece in procurement is a lot of it is just so much time and energy tied into very specifically understanding what is specifically important to the consumer, and make sure we have this end-to-end design to value view and unlocking the unnecessary cost that the consumer is not interested in or not actually valuing the proposition and then using that for fuel to drive the growth. So very focused around procurement in terms of one of the key levers to play our part in that CHF 2.5 billion. The second one is operational efficiency. We have opportunities across our network in every part of the network that we are laser-focused on. We've actually brought in a lot of new resources in that space to unlock the opportunities across our supply chain and our manufacturing network and our operating models, really streamlining our operating models. I think you saw Laurent very early days, moved from the 5 zones to 3 zones, which is part of that, But it's not so much -- is there cost savings to that? Sure, there's cost savings to that. But is that what it actually enables? No, what it does, you'll see is the opportunities and the consumer challenges or customer challenges that we deal with across whether it was the previous zones in North America and Latin America are very similar and the ability to solve those at scale and invest deeper in bigger tools or bigger solutions at the zone level, at the global level is what we're focused on. And that will unlock more Fuel for Growth. And then last one is commercial investment. We've been on this journey, but we really have ramped up the idea of not just doing it in the advanced markets, but doing it everywhere across the globe for Nestlé and driving efficiency behind our commercial investment, not just marketing. We all do ROI return models or marketing mix models on PFME for years. That's not it. This is actually really clear advanced tools that are driving total commercial return across all the levers of commercial investment, which is what we're focused on, and it will pay dividends. It is paying dividends already, and we look for that to continue to accelerate. And the last one is, as we look across PFME, you've seen us increase our marketing spend across the last year significantly across the zone. And we want to continue to do that. But in addition to that, it's not just about increasing the spend, it's actually making sure we get every single dollar of that, that we can working towards the consumer, right? Really focused on getting those dollars in the market working. We don't need 20 different campaigns in 20 different countries. Understand the key insight that unlocks behind that brand and then leverage those platforms and reduce that nonworking spend to drive that. And so that's really how the cadence change or the executional excellence change is pivoted in the organization as we move into '25 and beyond. And now once you generate the fuel, how do we spend it? What's the investment for growth for us? Many of those cells that Laurent talked about that either reside in the U.S. or a few in Latin America, and I'll focus more on the U.S. a little bit in terms of -- because I think the majority of the questions will come there, but most of these address across all of the zone. And we think about this idea of accelerating growth in 3 buckets, right? You heard from Laurent, existing winners, investing heavier behind existing lenders, and I'll go specifically into 2 examples on Purina supplements and therapeutics business. Tremendous business. When you see the results, you'll say, well, why would you -- that's incredible results. How much more can it be accelerated? Absolutely a significant opportunity when you prioritize it as one of the existing winners we're going to focus on. And e-commerce has been one that we're very proud of our results in e-commerce across Americas, but there's significant opportunity to continue to expand that. So I'll go specifically through those. I'll talk a little bit about the big bets. And then specifically, today, we'll talk about frozen in terms of addressing underperformers. And so if we look at it on the therapeutic side, look, this is the Pro Plan therapeutics business, and it's been an amazing run for us on Pro Plan, 20% OG on this business. We've doubled the sales. And it's really driven by just deep, deep consumer insights of helping pet parents better serve the needs of their family members -- their pet family members. And that's really driven by what we think is a world-class R&D network in PetCare. And when you say, look, is the opportunity going to continue with those numbers? Absolutely. This advanced therapeutic nutrition, driven by incredible R&D investment and increased R&D investment, you see where we've actually increased the investment behind us in what is already a $5 billion category that will continue to grow at a double-digit pace as we look ahead. And so what gives us the confidence to see the sustained growth and really, really make this one of the accelerated existing winners? It's this idea of very resistible product superiority. We will bring to bear that R&D that we have, solving those foundational needs that our pet consumers have and working in that channel with really key opinion leaders through our Purina Institute or all different measures, investing more in terms of having coverage in those channels and continuing to invest to expand that and driving the relationship to actually solve that. And you can do those things and it's fine, but there's still a key consumer tension there where the veterinary channel doesn't love to have all this inventory in the vet clinic. And at the same time, for the consumer, they don't really necessarily want to drag the bag home when they're trying to get the pet in and out of the vet. And so we've actually solved that by building new capabilities around this unmissable visibility where we have Vet Direct. You get the prescription or the order from the vet right in the clinic, and then we can ship it direct to the house through a D2C model where we can fulfill that. And it's building those capabilities that accelerates these winners that gives us this irresistible product superiority. So it starts with this idea of got to have a great product. In this space, specifically, you've got to win with the key opinion leaders. And I think we're well positioned. We've actually doubled down our investment to actually, reached that community and continue to expand that. And the last one is this unmissable visibility, solve the consumer tension to then drive the expansion of the category and our Vet Direct-to-consumer model that will solve that actually helps both the vet clinic and at the same time the consumer. And then if we look at e-commerce, e-commerce for us in the zone today, it's 22% of our sales is e-intensity as we call it. So pretty good strong growth. Actually, when you look at our portfolio that has a significant portion in frozen and a significant portion in refrigerated, very strong e-commerce developed business with a 23% growth CAGR across e-com. And we expect that to continue. If you look at the trends, it will continue to be double-digit expansion. Why? Because it fundamentally solves consumer attentions of convenience and generally value and consumers continue to move in that direction. Now for us, how do we continue to drive that momentum? How do we accelerate the momentum? It's not about maintaining the performance. Everything in this new Nestlé is all about accelerating the performance. And it's this idea of irresistible product superiority. And the product superiority is less about the products. We're always focused on 60-40 across all of our categories, but it's the consumer experience of that product and using new technology to unlock that as we work through that, as you think through the exchange or the commerce exchange that the consumer goes through, how do we use AI to really get personalized content. And we're very focused on delivering personalized content that's driving continued deeper relationship with those consumers and deploying AI items across that to make the journey seamless for the consumers and making sure we have the right pricing model. SRM, traditionally, everybody has an SRM model. It's built on traditional trade. And for this one, you got to have very specific e-SRM capabilities. And we've built all those to really focus on this acceleration of e-commerce and continue to grow at a much faster rate. And when you look at that across our zone, in North America, in the U.S. and Canada, it's entirely developed. In Latin America, it's still developing. And so the idea to take those early learnings where you're plus 20% of the business and rapidly deploy those as it will come at a much faster pace in Latin America than it is today. And I think we're very well positioned to lead that actually because we've been so successful in terms of just getting up that curve and building the capabilities in advance of the development of the business. So we'll deploy those across the rest of our markets and the zone and the world. And then the last one is when you look at those countries or the Latin American part of our business, even in the U.S., you've got such highly fragmented trade. And the way to solve that is through new technologies that drive e-commerce. And so these B2B platforms where you really build a one-on-one relationship that solves these smaller retailers problems and you do that through technology and then it completely creates a new solution, and that is one of the tools that will continue to drive that. And when we deploy those tools, it's -- everyone says you deploy B2B tools against fragmented channel. But for us, where we've done it, we actually see a 10% higher conversion of sales and an 8% sales lift in every single customer that we've converted, right, factually. We know that. And so we are rapidly deploying these across those channels and countries right now. And so when you look -- and then the next bucket is around innovation in big bet. So that's our existing winners. We'll continue to invest in those, and we'll continue to drive those. But just a couple of examples of bringing it to life in terms of how we're increasing the investment and increasing the expectation. And behind innovation of big bets, I'll talk about Espresso Concentrate. For the ones that were at the Capital Markets Day, you heard me talk about our coffee business, our coffee and creamers business in the Capital Markets Day. We've got a great business in the Americas. It's just CHF 10 billion and 9% CAGR across the last 6 years and just under 40% market share, 36%. And why we continue to love this category as it continues to capture more consumers. The consumers are coming into the category more frequently. And more importantly, coffee continues to serve more beverage occasions every single day, whether it's indulgence, refreshment as you move to more cold occasions, it opens up new opportunities and to continue to grow the expansion of that. So we have a great coffee portfolio today. And what Nescafé Espresso does for us is really unlock this at-home cold revolution. This is a tremendous product. You talk about product superiority. This is an excellent product that makes an amazing iced coffee. And these iced coffee creations that you just make before you head out the door on your way to the commute, is one that we're very excited about. And typically, what we do is we launch it kind of slowly across the globe, and we try to decide how and where we wanted to push it for us. It's a multimarket launch across [ own AMS ]. And you see the initial pilot was in Australia, very strong results in Australia. 2/3 of the volume is incremental to the brand and to the category and incredible over 300% index with Gen Z consumers. It's spot on with the younger consumers, which is driving growth in the category. Now we're in a U.S. launch right now. It's early days. It's just on shelf. And what we're seeing is a very strong results in the early shelf at Kroger, basically, which is our first customer we've launched with and doing very, very well. But it's a different approach. It's actually a different approach in this big bet innovation. It is a complete digital launch from a consumer communication standpoint because that we call it theater in the cup. If you look at that kind of beautiful blended Espresso Concentrate with one of our delicious creamers to make these amazing beverages. And to do that on life digitally, it really is what -- how the consumer absorbs the information, how they think about recipes and launch that. At the same time, with just unmissable visibility with in-store, heavy strong displays that we're focused on that really disrupt the aisle. And at this last time, we always focus on this idea of product superior. Do we have a great product? Do we have 60-40 in this category? Because that is ultimately what will bring the consumer back every time, and we're very confident in that. And then we will push it across the rest of the zones very rapidly. And then the last one is underperformance. I'll talk about. And specifically on frozen pizza, you heard Laurent talk about it. Really, we got out of balance on pricing drove a consumer value proposition problem in this category. We priced 15% greater than the category across '21 to '23, and we expect our brands to command a premium in the marketplace, right? We aspire most of our brands to trade at a premium. But that premium of that gap has to be managed. And as we went through that, you saw we actually expanded margin over the last few years across the zone, and that came at an expense of share. And what we've done is we've invested to fix those price gaps. We've actually corrected all those price caps. Moved 95% of the portfolio back within this $4 to $6 price point range, really leveraging the breadth of the portfolio across all the price points to actually get back to winning in this. And 52-week volume share, which is important because that's about occasions with the consumer, we're winning. Actually, we won share on volume. And the latest 4, we've actually $1 share, which we're excited about on pizza for the first time in a very long time. So early days, clearly not done with this turnaround, but good progress. When we get the price right, get the product right, we're confident in our brand's ability to win. And then the last one is frozen meals. We talk about frozen meals. When the demand really took off in COVID, we were supply constrained on this business, and we really cut the portfolio down to service the big kind of battleship part of this portfolio. And when we did that, actually we lost 25% of our distribution points because we narrowed the category or the items for us. And when you do that, this is a variety-seeking category. The big SKUs are important, but so is variety seeking. And that's what's really led to this. And so as we really focus back on innovation, making sure we have the appropriate share of shelf and this real focus behind make sure we're unmissable visibility, and we're controlling the share shelf that we need to with the right price point, we know we can win. If we look early days in frozen meals, we're actually back in positive share on frozen meal. It's very early. We are not declaring victory at all, but very strong progress to date. And when we -- again, when we know we get the right price, the right product and the right share of shelf and the focus around execution excellence, our brands will win. And with that, I'll close there on the Americas, and I'll turn it back to Laurent to close.

Thanks, Steve. So I guess, you have seen the degree of alignment across the organization. And I guess you saw it also at the Capital Markets Day. A couple of key messages to conclude. Number one, sounds obvious, but we want to make it happen. There is no growth without investment, and we are creating the Fuel for Growth. We have clear priorities on where and how we want to invest to drive our growth has a lot to do with focusing on the core, core brands, core innovation, innovation big bets, core SKUs. You have seen how we are doing that in the Americas. And I guess the degree of alignment speaks for itself. And overall, what you got at Nestlé, what you will see at Nestlé is a focused, aligned organization, executing with speed and discipline. And with this, we are accelerating performance and transformation. Thank you very much.

Okay. Let's move to the Q&A, and we'll take the first question at the front here.

Andrew Lazar from Barclays. Laurent and Steve, thanks so much for being here. We appreciate it. maybe a broader industry question. The packaged food industry, I think, over many decades, has faced all sorts of fundamental challenges and has always found its way back to a better place over time. It feels like a lot of the names at this stage are trading, are being valued as though this time is somehow different and that the challenges facing the industry are maybe more structural or enduring than maybe those of the past. And I'm just curious how you would address that. I realize it may take some time. There'll be more winners and losers. But my sense is many of the challenges that the industry faced in the past were seen as enduring then as well and prove not to be. So anyway, I would love your perspective.

Thanks for the question, and it's a great observation. The one thing I would like to highlight is that, we are still, one way or another, in the post-COVID normalization. So there's a bit of myopia effect because, yes, especially for our industry, we have seen an upside with -- through more meals at home, more coffee or beverages at home, more pet adoption, which has been also massive during the COVID period. And following that, period of inflation, we knew that this would be relatively short-lived because had been created by the imbalance between supply and demand. But that also boosted or supported the business to achieve a relatively impressive rates of growth. All of this is in the base today. So yes, optically, visually, there is a slowdown, but I think the fundamentals are there and the opportunity to grow is there. Population is aging. People want to live longer and healthier. Weight management is a big opportunity. Affordable nutrition is a big massive opportunity, normally for emerging markets. So I guess there is a little bit of myopia effect. The slowdown is kind of impressing everyone looking at the numbers. Now if you put it in perspective, I don't see any reason why industry should not come back, and that's also our view for Nestlé to historical growth rates.

Thanks. My question is for Steve. Steve, I think you worked very closely with Laurent for the past 12, 13 or so years now. So you probably know him better than almost anybody at Nestlé. My question is how would you characterize this leadership? And what should we, as the investment community expect from him as CEO? And Laurent, you can close your ears.

Well, this will be a short-lived tenure as CEO of Zone. Yes. I mean, as you said, I've actually worked for Laurent for long extended periods prior to this role of CEO. What I'd say is an incredible consistency, which you heard from Laurent, a little bit was this idea around the virtuous circle. But consistent in the approach, but with a passionate and intensity to return Nestlé to winning, right? We are long-term Nestlé guys that love this company that have been here for the majority of our careers. And it's this intensity and real passion for turning around this organization at speed that I think, for Laurent as the CEO versus, say, Laurent's as peer as his own colleague or a previous boss is we always try to move with speed, and we always talk about the things we need to do. But really, this intensity around focused around priorities. Global alignment around these priorities is not optional. Traditionally for us, it was like we want to maintain this flexibility. We are going to get behind these priorities. We are going to focus, we have a very clear focused investment strategy in terms of where we're going to bet, where we're going to invest. And we're not just going to say it, we're going to do it, and we're going to do it at speed. And so what I'd say is I'm actually highly encouraged by -- I mean, I've known Laurent and worked for Laurent for a very long time. But this passion for turning around this organization comes from this deep love that keeps us here. And we feel like, we, as the leaders of this organization, we've got an obligation, not just to our shareholders and to our stakeholders, but to the hundreds of thousands of people that come to work every day for us and bust their butts and actually try to deliver tremendous products for our consumers. And that passion comes through and that intensity comes through.

Let's go to the middle...

Yes, I've got a bit of a structural question, Jacob from [indiscernible]. When I look at Bloomberg in '18 or in '13, your EBITDA was CHF 18 billion. In '17 it was almost CHF 19 billion. And in '24, it was CHF 19.5 billion. So basically, for 10, 12 years, very -- basically no growth. What's going to take Nestlé to the next level when I look at you for the coming 5 to 10 years? Basically, [indiscernible] about restructuring and fixing what went wrong, but I'm actually looking for earnings growth.

Yes. Very good question. Don't forget one thing is that we are a Swiss franc company. And between 2018 and 2024, Swiss franc has valued massively against any currency. That's one of the specifics of Nestlé that we got 2% of our revenues in Swiss franc and a chunk of our cost in Swiss franc. So when you translate, consolidate, you can get that effect. But don't forget that the Swiss franc has massively valued during the period and the -- I mean, for the better. And don't forget also that when we raised our dividend this year again, to reward as should be our investors and following also past practice of the last 30-plus years, that is also in Swiss franc. So yes, we are a Swiss franc based company. And I guess, in hard currency, the numbers that you have highlighted mean something translated in U.S. dollars or in euros. Now what can we expect? You should expect a tremendous focus on accelerating what we got, as I said, because I got the question mark, many times, how about M&A? M&A is in the backseat. We don't exclude M&A, but it's in the backseats. It's not the priority. Priority is to drive the business. We got focus on the core. There is so much more we can do on the core, including on coffee, PetCare and nutrition. And I guess we can accelerate those categories are good categories intrinsically with very good levels of margin, good margin structure, and you will see value creation through the core. This is what you see in the future, an acceleration of performance, while we transform for the future. Three dimensions maybe to highlight about the transformation. I guess, as an investor, it's important to know where we are heading. Innovation is a big play, building up the new growth engines and the big bets, but we want to be very, very focused there and intentional. Second, focusing on expanding the winners, and there is so much more we can get through that. And making sure that the priorities are well embraced, well understood across the organization, from SKUs up to the brands and through that, you should see an acceleration in value creation. And I forgot to mention digitalization, AI. And also, we want to walk the talk in terms of the sustainability agenda, 3 priorities: climate, regenerative agriculture, making the food system more resilient and circularity.

Okay. And I think that's a great place to stop. Let's put our hands together and thank Nestlé for coming to CAGNY and to closing out the session.